[rbt]

Also keep in mind that the 400m-500m-600m circles are a very simplistic way to visualize the area influenced by a station.

That area has a decent streetgrid. A circle is going to be pretty close to actuality.

 

[smallspy]

The catchment area along Eglinton which is walking distance from, say, Oakwood, but not Dufferin or Eglinton West is 80-100 houses. It's not like by dropping Oakwood we'd be dropping coverage to Kowloon. These are 600m radiuses.

People here are vastly overstating the additional coverage stations like Oakwood provide.

Moreover, simple metrics like coverage are kind of meaningless since most riders reach rapid transit stations by connecting routes. Walk-ins simply don't account for much ridership, so improving walk-in coverage by covering a few extra houses makes hardly any contribution to ridership.

Last I checked, it is difficult at best to walk through people's backyards in an attempt to make your walk more direct.

Those circles are nice, but also fairly pointless. A more accurate map would have an actual 600 metre path along every single walking path. You will see that the catchment area is quite a bit smaller than you think.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[ehlow]

Some really good points made here. My opinion is that it would have probably been OK to not have Oakwood station, but having it there isn't the end of the world that some people make it out to be.

Mt Pleasant & Yonge station's overlap is justified in my opinion due to the very high density of that block (it's all apartment buildings and condos, with more condos to come).

 

[Palma]

It's not "walking 400 metres".

It's walking an additional 400 metres once you've finally reached Eglinton. Or worse yet, running a parallel bus service (and having to pay for it).

Only a small percentage of the catchment area of any given station is on Eglinton.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

Wow, a whole 550 metres. Boy oh boy. What can I say. I'd rather not.

 

[diminutive]

Last I checked, it is difficult at best to walk through people's backyards in an attempt to make your walk more direct.

Har-har.

Those circles are nice, but also fairly pointless. A more accurate map would have an actual 600 metre path along every single walking path. You will see that the catchment area is quite a bit smaller than you think.

Like rbt said, with a fairly decent grid, the circle will closely approximate actual distances. That's why I used fairly conservative distances (600m, vs. the more standard 800m), to try to account for minor reductions.

What destinations/origins exactly do you see an Oakwood stations serving that nearby stations couldn't serve? Can you realistically see more than 100-200 houses that would be left out? Why are you assuming walk-in ridership is even very important to net ridership?

Therefore you can't say, just based on the circles, that Oakwood will definitely have fewer riders than, say, Bathurst, only that your gut feeling is it will generate fewer riders. When you look at the details you might be right or wrong.

Yes, you're right.

If you look through the Eglinton demand forecasts, the projected ridership at stations like Chaplin or Avenue road is extremely small. Oakwood wasn't included in that report because it was seen to be too low volume, so presumably it would be in the same ballpark. These would be some of the least used stations in the entire system.

I didn't want to overemphasize radial coverage circles. Particularly for rapid transit, where "coverage" is more a function of connecting surface routes than any kind of local demand. I was trying to respond to the arguments that stations like Oakwood are justified on the basis of coverage (rather than, you know, actual ridership). This is a silly argument since we can see that the reduction in coverage from removing these stations is quite minor.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Wow, a whole 550 metres. Boy oh boy. What can I say. I'd rather not.

This discussion is ridiculous. If you can't manage at least a 700m walk you should be on Wheel Trans.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Mt Pleasant & Yonge station's overlap is justified in my opinion due to the very high density of that block (it's all apartment buildings and condos, with more condos to come).

That's a whole different kettle of fish.

Mount Pleasant to Yonge is 600 meters, Mount Pleasant to Bayview is even further, and not only does the Mount Pleasant and Eglinton area have a high density of population, jobs, and high school students, but it also intersects with a north-south bus line.

 

[ehlow]

That's a whole different kettle of fish.

Mount Pleasant to Yonge is 600 meters, Mount Pleasant to Bayview is even further, and not only does the Mount Pleasant and Eglinton area have a high density of population, jobs, and high school students, but it also intersects with a north-south bus line.

Good points. I would actually prefer the Mt Pleasant bus to simply run up & down Mt Pleasant instead of having two routes that go into Eglinton station & St Clair station, and also go downtown to Jarvis like the premium express bus, and be more frequent. I think it would get higher ridership in that case.

 

[Palma]

This discussion is ridiculous. If you can't manage at least a 700m walk you should be on Wheel Trans.

could not stop laughing at this. But oh so true. I am surprised I did not think it

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Good points. I would actually prefer the Mt Pleasant bus to simply run up & down Mt Pleasant instead of having two routes that go into Eglinton station & St Clair station, and also go downtown to Jarvis like the premium express bus, and be more frequent. I think it would get higher ridership in that case.

Yup. I only recall getting on the Mt. Pleasant bus like 5 times in my whole life because it is always faster to walk from Eglinton to Davisville than it is waiting for a bus. It is that infrequent.

The Davisville bus is also pretty infrequent, despite the rather large number of people I see at the bus stations along that route. Never understood why, it is a short route. Surely you can get a bus driver to do a constant circle of the route. I've heard that the bus drivers on that route take a 30 minute break at Davisville Station after every run.

 

[ehlow]

Yup. I only recall getting on the Mt. Pleasant bus like 5 times in my whole life because it is always faster to walk from Eglinton to Davisville than it is waiting for a bus. It is that infrequent.

The Davisville bus is also pretty infrequent, despite the rather large number of people I see at the bus stations along that route. Never understood why, it is a short route. Surely you can get a bus driver to do a constant circle of the route. I've heard that the bus drivers on that route take a 30 minute break at Davisville Station after every run.

That's true, there are so many apartment buildings along that Davisville stretch that you'd expect a decent bus service.

Maybe the Mt Pleasant bus could happen after the LRT opens, since those taking the bus can transfer to the LRT to get to the subway. Currently the buses are infrequent feeders into the subway, I guess they're mainly for those who can't walk to the subway.

The other thing I'd like to see being looked at once the LRT finishes is doing a pedestrian scramble at Yonge-Eg like the one at Yonge-Dundas. It seems like the pedestrian volume is there to justify it, but it would impede bus flow currently.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Yup. I only recall getting on the Mt. Pleasant bus like 5 times in my whole life because it is always faster to walk from Eglinton to Davisville than it is waiting for a bus. It is that infrequent.

The Davisville bus is also pretty infrequent, despite the rather large number of people I see at the bus stations along that route. Never understood why, it is a short route. Surely you can get a bus driver to do a constant circle of the route. I've heard that the bus drivers on that route take a 30 minute break at Davisville Station after every run.

The buses in that part of Toronto remind me of service in a midwestern city in the US: non-grid, non-frequent services that seem to chase away ridership with their bad design.

For example, you can't use a bus north-south through the entirety of Leaside in Bayview without transferring from the infrequent 11 to the even less frequent 28A at Davisville. Then there's the infrequent 74 along Mount Pleasant, despite the fact that Mount Pleasant is quite a vibrant strip.

It seems that the job of most of those routes is just to funnel people to the [overcrowded] Yonge subway line. I wonder if having one frequent service north-south route along either Mount Pleasant or Bayview would help local travel patterns and relieve the Yonge line (albeit very minimally).

 

[ehlow]

The buses in that part of Toronto remind me of service in a midwestern city in the US: non-grid, non-frequent services that seem to chase away ridership with their bad design.

For example, you can't use a bus north-south through the entirety of Leaside in Bayview without transferring from the infrequent 11 to the even less frequent 28A at Davisville. Then there's the infrequent 74 along Mount Pleasant, despite the fact that Mount Pleasant is quite a vibrant strip.

It seems that the job of most of those routes is just to funnel people to the [overcrowded] Yonge subway line. I wonder if having one frequent service north-south route along either Mount Pleasant or Bayview would help local travel patterns and relieve the Yonge line (albeit very minimally).

Totally agree, we need frequent routes that simply go along a straight road like Mt Pleasant-Jarvis and Bayview. I just took a look at Bayview and it could keep going south on Bayview to provide an alternative to the subway. It would make it so much easier to use the system as well, and actually understand where you're going by taking a given bus route.

Both those routes would go fairly fast when there isn't traffic as well, since those roads are pretty fast was to drive downtown.

Hopefully these routes will be re-adjusted when the LRT opens.

 

[Rainforest]

There should be a balance between the needs of local service and longer-range trips.

However, this balance is already achieved in the Eglinton LRT design. There will be 25 stops (24 distances between) for the 19.5 km long line from Kennedy to Mt Dennis; that translates to average stop spacing of 810 m.

That spacing is similar to (actually, a bit wider than) the spacing on the central section of BD subway. There is no need to remove stop from Eglinton.

 

[smallspy]

Like rbt said, with a fairly decent grid, the circle will closely approximate actual distances. That's why I used fairly conservative distances (600m, vs. the more standard 800m), to try to account for minor reductions.

Except that it's not that minor. The distances from where the consecutive circles meet to any given station is 800 to 850 metres - 33% or more than your "baseline" 600m difference. Push the circles out to 800m, and all of a sudden we're talking about a distance of over a kilometer from the outer edges of it.

What destinations/origins exactly do you see an Oakwood stations serving that nearby stations couldn't serve? Can you realistically see more than 100-200 houses that would be left out? Why are you assuming walk-in ridership is even very important to net ridership?

Who said that we're talking about just houses? There are loads of businesses along that stretch.

And why would you not take into account walk-in traffic? That's the whole reason why there are stops so frequently. There is tons of walk-in traffic along the central stretch of the Bloor-Danforth, or the Yonge Line between Eglinton and Bloor.

I didn't want to overemphasize radial coverage circles. Particularly for rapid transit, where "coverage" is more a function of connecting surface routes than any kind of local demand.

I don't know how you can figure that. Walk-in traffic accounts for a majority of ridership from some of the eastern Danforth stations.

Methinks that you are taking the term "rapid" far too literally. We're not talking about a line down the middle of the Allen.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.